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Europeans Distort Bush Vision in Road Map

(Jerusalem Report) Ehud Ya'ari - European pens worked elements into the road map that have the potential to distort the original "Bush vision" of a different Palestinian leadership. There is too much emphasis on international conferencing and too little insistence on the necessity of negotiations - and reaching agreement - between the two sides. Essentially, the danger is that a Palestinian state may be established without prior agreement with Israel, without a firm commitment to peace but only with some kind of cease-fire. Israel should try to reach an understanding that a Palestinian state, should we get to that stage, will only be established on the basis of a prior agreement regarding the refugees' "right of return." The same goes for Israeli demands to limit this state's sovereignty and for the dismantling of the terror organizations, rather than having them folded into the security services of the Palestinian Authority. If the road map has the power - which I seriously doubt - to serve as an exit mechanism from the cycle of violence, there is no reason now to start writing its epitaph. And if, as Hamas has promised, there is only one road map - that which leads the suicide bombers to Paradise - then the document will in any case turn into a collection of dead letters.
2003-06-04 00:00:00
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